It is an established fact that the first patented flashlight was granted to British inventor David Misell (U.S. Pat. No. 617,592), on Jan. 10, 1899. Misell's flashlight was powered by “D” type batteries and was laid front to back in a paper tube. Misell's flashlight was powered a single light bulb, and had a brass reflector at the distal end. Since that time, there have been several flashlight designs, patented with improvements such as LEDs to replace the incandescent light bulb, as well as other upgraded variants of design, like adjustable light beam focusing and AC to DC recharging stations using USB power connections to 110V wall outlets. However, in spite of the myriad of advanced designs for the average consumer for camping or recreational usage, there has yet to have been made any significant advances in tactical flashlights, for modern military personnel or first responders.
A prevailing problem faced by both military and first responders is the dilemma of assuring that their battery powered flashlights are in fact adequately charged. If a police officer were to use a poorly charged flashlight while entering a hostile area on foot (for example, a police search warrant execution) the deficiency of proper lighting could add significant risk of injury or death in these cases where the officer(s) have reasonable belief that the suspect is armed or otherwise extremely dangerous. In the worst case, where the batteries have not been recharged at all, the officer using the single lit ends of prior art flashlights would have to then rely heavily on any available ambient lighting provided.
Another drawback seen with solar powered flashlight recharging systems is that these units can may only be recharged during the day, and can experience a significant degradation in performance if the solar cells get dirty, or over prolonged use having the solar cells scratched or broken. An additional customary drawback of the flashlights of prior art is that they fail to provide means of assessing the charge level when in actual use, as prevalent models contain LED battery gauges only at their static recharge stations.
A survey of existing flashlight patents does not reveal any prior art flashlights that have the full set of the unique capabilities of the present invention. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 8,863,366 entitled Method of Converting a Non-Rechargeable Flashlight to a Rechargeable Flashlight and issued to Berger discloses a flashlight that has a replacement tail cap with circuitry for receiving electrical power from a recharging base station for recharging the rechargeable flashlight battery. U.S. Patent Appl. No. 20090154149 entitled Inductive Flashlight Charging System with Concentric Coils and submitted by Huang discloses a flashlight that can recharge through inductive charging using a coil that is concentric with the cylindrical housing of the flashlight and which sits into a base charging station with contains the primary charging coil. Although these patent examples cited share slight elements of the present invention, they do not encompass all of the unique capabilities of the present invention. Indeed, there exists the need for a rechargeable flashlight that can better accommodate the needs of the modern day first responder and military personnel by providing innovative additional features, which shall be discussed presently.